Customer Reviews

MLB Front Office Manager

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

When I first heard about MLB Front Office Manager I was very excited. I've always enjoyed the management aspect of sports games and usually spend much more time managing and toying with the rosters than I do "playing" the sport itself. Enter MLB FOM. My sports prayers have been answered, right?

Not really. I've played through one season, and I can't even bring myself to get through my second offseason as a GM (I'll explain below). So with out further ado, lets get down to the good, the bad and the OMG what where they thinking?

The Good:

The interface is clean and the options are incredibly realistic. It runs pretty smooth. Anything you could want management wise in sports game. Not only can you offer arbitration, participate in the Rule 5 draft, and scout the world for talent, but you can also offer incentives, control your 40 man roster, and run every imaginable aspect of a baseball front office. You get frequent email updates informing you of various things around the league, but these quickly become a nuisance.


The Bad:

Where to start? The music is bad but that doesn't really matter. Trades are horrible. Its nearly impossible to trade for anyone, even when they are on the trade block, unless you grossly overpay in talent. What's mind bending is that when the AI makes trades, they seem to be almost laughable, but when a real player gets involved, the gloves come off. There is no way to gauge a players interest in resigning, an by the time you know they aren't interested in your bid, they have signed with someone else. The menus are tedious and you can't sort by things that really matter, like overall talent rating, the ability to hit for power or average, etc, on most screens. In fact, the only way to find out a players skill ratings is to go player by player and look at their info on a separate screen. This makes scouting for hidden talent in other teams farm systems incredibly time consuming and not enjoyable. The fact that the players don't seem to evolve during the season regardless of how good or bad the play throughout the year. The only times I have seen ratings change is when the calender goes from Dec 31 to Jan 1. The big problem with this is that you can vastly overpay for players when you resign them or nab them on the free market. I resigned a 2B to start (rated 50, more on that in the next section) only to see him drop to 35 Jan 1st. he went from being my starter to not even making the MLB squad. Ratings should change before you resign players or sign free agents. Also, most teams seem to resign their free agents before the signing period starts, so there are very few good options to upgrade your team in the offseason.


The OMG What Where They Thinking:

The three things that drive me crazy in this game: The way you resign your own players, the ratings system for players, and random "game manager mode." First, resigning players. Negotiating your MLB players is fine. What kills me is negotiating with all the minor league-ers in AAA, AA, A+, A, and SS (rookie league). The problem is that every single minor player will gladly except a minor league contact (does not count against your budget) for 1 year. If you offer more than 1 year they will reject you 99 out of 100 times unless you offer a lot more money. The problem? You have to go into every single player and offer them a deal. This wouldn't be so bad if the game left you at the screen where you resigned your minor leaguer. But, instead, it jumps you back to the MLB tab. So you have to click on the minor league level tab every time you want to resign a minor leaguer. Whats worse is that you can't even sort them by overall talent, so you have to look at each player individually before going back and offering a contract. So if you have 25 players at each minor league level (5) and then you have to click three times per player (once for the level tab, once to check their ratings and once to offer them a deal, you are looking at 375 clicks. It became so time consuming that I gave up before I finished with the AAA squad. Secondly, they ratings are very strange. They range from 20-80, where most games range 0-100. The problem here is that you end up with the vast majority of players falling between 45-55. Anything over 60 is a "great player" and 70 or over is elite. Somehow, Mark Texiera is only rated 60! In fact, the only player rated 80 is that certain picture the Yanks threw a ton of cash at earlier this year. Its just a very odd way to rank, makes some players seem ranked well below their skills and makes you feel like you are overpaying for everyone. Lastly, there is a mode where you can "manage" your team on the field. You can't play anyone, its greatly sped up, you can't really "scout" your talent, and the presentation is horrible. I really wonder why they added this feature at all. It would have ben better if they added commentators or something. Also, on a side note, you can't even focus on certain players to help them develop. I could go on but i'll stop.


The Verdict:

If you are looking for a game that resembles work more than it does entertainment then this game is for you! You get the feeling as you plod along playing this game that 2K Games just threw this game out there to milk the last untapped segment of their MLB License. There are so many things that could have been better. One thing I didn't rant on was the interface. They took this game directy from their XBox360 platform. I mean this literally, and they didn't even bother to remove the xbox icon buttons telling you how to differnt things. If you do decide to get this game make sure you but a PC Xbos usb controller. Also, many of the features seem like they should have been side notes added to their main flagship, MLB 2k'9.

If you are looking for a great gaming experience that mixes fun, game play, and management AND you have a PS2 or a PS3, save you money and buy MLB The Show 09 when it comes out. Its the best baseball game out there, has many of the management features that this games has AND they have added the rule 5 draft and arbitration for the upcoming release.

Even though you can't actually pitch, bat, or field in this game, the chance to simulate being a GM with real players, trades, waivers, free agents, the Rule V draft, and sabermetric stats, and then watch the games, sounded like fun to me. It's not, though, because it doesn't get any of those things right. For example:

1. The statistics are incorrect. If your starting pitcher gives you two innings, but your team wins the game, the starter still gets the win. The game is filled with misinterpretations of the basic rules of baseball, like this one.

2. There is no way to sort players by their skills. Clicking on each player in every league one-at-a-time, and scribbling the results on a spreadsheet, makes the game unrealistic and tedious at the same time.

3. The players, especially the stars, seem to have been assigned skill levels based on random chance, rather than an appraisal of their abilities or statistics. Also, players' skill ratings change dramatically from year to year, often with no relationship whatsoever to their age, health, or stats. (Using the realistic 20 to 80 rating scale is great, but the ratings the game assigns to the players are random, and change randomly.)

4. Unlike in real baseball, you can immediately trade anyone you just signed as a free agent. In real baseball, you have to wait until midseason to trade a free agent that you signed that year.

5. Unlike in real baseball, you can call up to the majors and send down to the minors players (who have options) without the mandatory ten day waiting period.

6. No lists of top prospects, either in the aggregate or by position, are maintained. (I'm not convinced that the AI is sufficient to figure out who the top prospects are, anyway.)

7. The AI is far more artificial than intelligent. Top prospects like Mat Gamel are placed on waivers in 2009 (without any reason, such as an injury). The computer-controlled general mangers lack distinct philosophies and strategies.

8. Even if you create your own players or edit the existing ones, you cannot use your edits in all aspects of the game. The players you create or edit are restricted to certain game modes.

In short, this game is not worth your money; it wouldn't even be worth playing if it were free. In my opinion, it is the direct result of the lack of competition in baseball games that began when MLB sold the exclusive rights to make baseball games to 2K Sports.

Before you purchase this game, make sure you validate that your video card meets standards - or you'll waste $40 on a non-returnable game! 2k admits on their forum that most (MOST!) on-board video cards cannot run this game!!! My computer is 2 years old, I upgraded my video card at the time, and it's now too outdated to run this game. This is not just my issue, it's all over the 2k forums - so many people have been posting about this issue... furious that 2k made this game for such a narrow consumer group. Not to mention their Customer Service is a joke and doesn't respond promptly or with any apology or assistance.

On both my relatively new computers -- one desktop, one laptop -- both name brand machines, I couldn't get this game to run because of graphics card incompatibility. Yep, I should have double checked, but given the age of my machines and never having had any problems with other popular video games purchased I wound up sadly disappointed.

This was a great idea from 2k sports, that frankly, just wasn't executed the right way. I really wanted to like this game, but it left me wanting more. I felt that although the game markets it as a game where you can control your team and how the team does, there really isn't that much control. It's more like you just choose the players, crunching the fancy numbers, but have little to no control on the outcome.

* You can play as a coach during gamedays, calling hit and runs, bunts, pitching around a hitter, walking, etc., but that's as deep as it gets. Why couldn't more managerial powers be implemented? I felt that more choices could be worked into the game like : running bunt, hitting the other way, hitting a certain location with a good control hitter, pitching only to certain location to a hitter, etc. I was hoping that the mangerial aspect of the game could have been deeper.

* I wasn't expecting to be able to actually control how the hitter or pitcher plays during the game, but the simulation and graphic sequences seemed questionable. Essentially, you chose among basic options like, hit, bunt, pitch, walk, pitch around. When you make your option, automatically they will animate and show you what will happen. I found this very pointless, especially if the player had no control. I suggest that that the manager should at least be able to chose where the location of the pitch, or how the hitter approaches the pitcher, not just simple hit, pitch, etc.

* Real life ratings have little to do with success of player. You'll likely see more differences between someone like Tim Lincecum and Bartolo Colon, but even the best pitchers fail most of the time. With such a shallow set of choices, the game isn't letting the best pitchers or hitters, be the best players.

It's unfortunate, I really wanted to like this game, but I am heavily disappointed.

My Purchase: I thought I was getting a game disc, but instead it ended up being a part of some online gaming place named "Steam". No big deal, except it just annoys me that I open "Steam" to open my game.

The Game: Pretty much exactly what I was looking for in a "GM" type game EXCEPT they kept going and screwed it up royally. They took the fun out of it by being the GM for not only your MLB team, but your AAA, AA, A, A+, and Rookie league teams as well. Ummm, that's WAYYYYYYY to much management and time for it to be fun. You get bogged down in the details of your minor league players and rosters and it just gets way to crazy during the season. Seriously, managing players, salaries, lineups, rotations, call ups/send downs, trades, for your A+ league????? It would have been perfect with just the MLB stuff and have the computer manage the minor leagues. During the season you can play, manage, or SIM a game which is awesome. Don't expect playing a game to be as good other MLB games though.

As a UK resident I have only recently been able to purchase this game because it was never released outside of North America and all (legitimate) download sites don't allow the game to be purchased outside of the original licensed territories. The game recently became available on the UK Amazon site so as a huge baseball and sports management fan I decided to shell out the twelve or so bucks and suck it up if the game is as terrible as all the reviews say.

I don't know if its because I'm running the game on a 3 month old computer which handles the processing better than the ones available two years ago but seriously, I haven't seen any of the stats glitches that rendered the game unplayable for many people. Admittedly I have only played one full season but -

I didn't 'lose' any players on the 40 man roster after spring training

My Detroit Tigers went 79-83 (exactly the same record as 2008, although I thought I had upgraded quite well in the offseason) with a realistic Pitching Staff ERA of 4.61, team BA .272 and the HR, SB and other 'Counting' stats were all believable.

I didn't check every box score but the pitcher wins and losses seemed to tally with their innings piched, I certainly never saw wins awarded to starters who didn't go at least five innings.

It isn't THAT much hard work looking through the minors for talented players on other teams, for the Rule 5 draft you can ignore anybody that has a salary number and/or is less than 22 years old. Just look at players with an 'Overall' of 40 or higher to cut out the dross, it literally took me less than an hour to do this, some people spend longer than that setting up leagues in OOTP so I don't see it is a waste of time.

The interface IS initially clunky, but you only have to find out where information is once to remember it in future. Although it would be nice to know how to delete e-mails - if that is actually possible.

The 40 man roster - you don't HAVE to have 40 players on there at the start of the season, I checked out the real 40 man rosters on ESPN and almost none of the teams actually has 40 players on there. Some only have 32-34 which makes sense because you have to make allowances for all the 15 day DL guys that count towards the total. I don't know why so many people 'lost' players after spring training but maybe they hadn't added every guy with a Major League contract from their farm system and the game can't cope with that? A big deal seems to be the 'problem' when you move a player into your active roster to replace an injured guy then have to find room for him somewhere in the minors when the injured player comes back. Several reviews go on about having to go into every level of your farm system making adjustments but theres a really simple answer. When the guy on the DL is due to come back go into the extended roster screen for the level you want to send his replacement player to and put them in an empty slot there. That frees up the spot on your active roster and allows you to move the original guy back from the DL.
The annoying thing about the 40 man roster is your unnamed Manager only ever plays the starters on the depth chart in Spring Training, if you want your back ups to play a few games you have to alter the depth charts accordingly. The unnamed Manager thing BTW is also frustrating..A baseball GM simulation where you can't hire or fire the field manager?

I'm sure many many people did have serious issues with this game when it first came out and the lack of any kind of support from 2K Sports would lead you to believe that these problems couldn't have been fixed via a simple patch so they didn't bother trying. Some games run weird on AMD processors because they process instructions differently than INTEL, maybe this has something to do with it, who knows?

For me, I have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of game killing glitches while still recognising that there are problems with the gameplay overall. It can be hard work, but when I started videogaming on a ZX80 you had to map out whole game worlds yourself so I'm not bothered about keeping a few handwritten lists besides me when I play...

I think you have to have a lot of patience to get anything out of this and it really appeals more to gamers who love things like Football Manager, the hardcore soccer simulation that is way more complicated than this but sells millions of copies every year, there was a similar reaction when EA released Head Coach a few years ago, I don't think many American gamers like spending twenty minutes organising a training session or hiring Defensive Line assistant coaches but we Brits consider that to be 'immersive'...On the other hand if the game was throwing up utterly random stats and teams were going 3-159 like I have read about it would be unplayable, so i feel the pain of those who shelled out full price for something that was utterly flawed for them.

Avoid at all costs. I paid one buck for it on Steam and I feel ripped off.

The menus are almost impossible to navigate.

For some reason you have to resign every minor leaguer every year.

If you sim a few weeks the AI will do crazy thing s like release your starting catcher. I played a season as the Red Sox. I clinched the division with a few games left so I simmed the last few games. The AI released Papelbon! Then, evem though I pulled my best pitchers out of the rotation to line them up for the playoffs the AI pitched them anyway.

This game is horrible.

As a fan of sports management sims - football (soccer), rugby and cricket - and having a passing interest in baseball, I bought this to see how managing a US baseball team would compare.

Perhaps I didn't read the spec closely enough but thus far I have found the title disappointing. The interface is far from intuitive for keyboard and mouse, seems to have been designed for a gamepad and console more than the PC. As a baseball "noob" I expected to do some head scratching but you are thrown straight in the deep end with contract negotiation for the new season. However the lightweight manual is of little use and there's not much in game help either. A tutorial would definitely have been of use.

Management seems largely confined to dealing with contracts and picking your squad. I couldn't see any coaching or training element which is surely a key component of any sports management sims where you hire the coaches and support staff then decide how you proceed with developing the squad. No team talks or individual "pep talks" with the players either. You don't get any say in managing investment in the ground or associated commercial activities - not saying you need to be setting the price of everything down to the hot pies from the concession stands (as an EA soccer management game did) but I find this aspect quite enjoyable.

When match day (eventually) arrives one of the things that attracted me to MLB over other text based sims was the promise of a full 3D game engine. This is best described as functional rather than pretty. Options are again extremely limited - there's very little in the way of tactical input into playing style. If you choose to go ball by ball, you can't vary the pitch style, batting is either hit or bunt. There's a feature to auto-play the match but surely this defeats the point of a management game?

Overall, rather disappointed. Maybe as someone not that well versed in the game I'm missing the point of what a baseball Front Office Manager does - but if this is all he does, it's not a very interesting premise for a game.

One final point, the game uses Steam to install and authenticate from the DVD - good news you don't need the disc in the drive (apart from the HD footprint of course), bad news if you decide the game isn't for you then you can't sell it on secondhand.

Can you imagine the nerve of 2K sports to throw this game into the arena with the quality of other baseball sims on the market?? It's like a kid playing tee ball being placed on a major league roster.

Years and years of tweaking and dedication by other game makes (ootp/baseball mogul) have produced spectacular games with a high level of realism. Then, enter front office manager, where they throw out all basic MLB rules such as free agency, waivers, AAA demotions, contract negotiations/40-man rosters...etc....

What an embarrassment this should be. You better come harder than this if you want to survive 2K sports!!!!